Lyft’s New Lab, Corporate Partnerships Open up New Avenues in Autonomy

Ride-hailing service Lyft is serious about self-driving cars. Just recently, it announced an autonomous vehicle lab that will be based in Palo Alto, California and plans to employ several hundred people by late next year while cooperating closely with its partners in this space. “We aren’t thinking of our self-driving division as a side project. It’s core to our business,” said Luc Vincent, vice president of autonomous technology at Lyft. “That’s why 10 percent of our engineers are already focused on developing self-driving technology—and we’ll continue to grow that team in the months ahead.”

Lyft’s aggressive AV push is another example of how players in the auto and tech space see self-driving cars as a vital part of their future business plans.

This announcement comes on top of its partnerships with Waymo, Jaguar, GM, and start-up nuTonomy. The company’s aggressive AV push is another example of how players in the auto and tech space see self-driving cars as a vital part of their future business plans. But it is also a reflection of how important AVs will be to the urban landscape—and how they will likely open up new areas of commerce and alter our relationships with retail outlets.

Commerce

It’s also too soon to fully realize how autonomous cars will open new avenues of commerce and change consumers’ relationships with retail, but Lyft’s recent actions give a glimpse into what the future might hold. The company is not only developing partnerships with those in the transportation space; it also has formed partnerships with Taco Bell, Disney, and Amtrak, to provide more convenience for the consumer. The Taco Bell deal is to provide mid-ride meals late at night, Disney will shuttle customers in a “Minnie Van” around the resort, and Amtrak riders can use the train service’s app to book a ride with Lyft to take them to and from the station.

Lyft is not only developing partnerships with those in the transportation space; it also has formed partnerships with Taco Bell, Disney, and Amtrak, to provide more convenience for the consumer.

By partnering with companies where they can find synergies, the ride-hailing company is trying to satisfy customers beyond the ease and accessibility of providing an on-demand ride and develop long-term relationships with its consumer base. Lyft is an attractive partner for these companies since it understands routing and mapping, and possesses key data on travel patterns and consumer habits.

When autonomy and ride-sharing eventually converge, these types of services will be even more common. Vehicles and rides will become more personalized, tailored to each individuals’ interest. As Deloitte noted in a report, “Mobility management companies and fleet operators [will] offer a range of passenger experiences to meet widely varied needs at differentiated price points.”

Urbanization

After decades of suburbanization, which boomed after World War II, the U.S. is now seeing a trend toward urbanization with more people migrating to cities. This has large implications for car ownership, ride-sharing, and autonomous vehicles. Companies like Lyft are trying to capitalize on this trend, but will also help reinforce it, making urban travel more convenient and making it more enticing to live and work in cities. But in order for cities to remain attractive as places to live, congestion, bottlenecks, and infrastructure constraints such as limited parking spaces need to be resolved. This is where autonomous cars will be part of the solution.

Companies like Lyft are trying to capitalize on the trend of urbanization, but will also help reinforce it, making urban travel more convenient and making it more enticing to live and work in cities.

The convenience for city dwellers, along with reduced costs for consumers, will be taken a step further with autonomous taxis. In this scenario, the incentive to own a car in cities will decline. It’s still too early to tell exactly where autonomous vehicles will first take off, but with the aggressive strategies of a companies like Lyft, it’s more likely to occur in urban areas and dense suburbs.

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The Fuse is an energy news and analysis site supported by Securing America’s Future Energy. The views expressed here are those of individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the organization.

Issues in Focus

Safety Standards for Crude-By-Rail Shipments

A series of accidents in North America in recent years have raised concerns regarding rail shipments of crude oil. Fatal accidents in Lynchburg, Virginia, Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Fayette County, West Virginia, and (most recently) Culbertson, Montana have prompted public outcry and regulatory scrutiny.

2014 saw an all-time record of 144 oil train incidents in the U.S.—up from just one in 2009—causing a total of more than $7 million in damage.

The spate of crude-by-rail accidents has emerged from the confluence of three factors. First is the massive increase in oil movements by rail, which has increased more than three-fold since 2010. Second is the inadequate safety features of DOT-111 cars, particularly those constructed prior to 2011, which account for roughly 70 percent of tank cars on U.S. railroads. Third is the high volatility of oil produced from the Bakken and other shale formations, which makes this crude more prone towards combustion.

Of these three, rail car safety standards is the factor over which regulators can exert the most control. After months of regulatory review, on May 1, 2015, the White House and the Department of Transportation unveiled the new safety standards. The announcement also coincided with new tank car standards in Canada—a critical move, since many crude by rail shipments cross the U.S.-Canadian border. In the words DOT, the new rule:

Since the rule was announced, Republicans in Congress sought to roll back the provision calling for an advanced breaking system, following concerns from the rail industry that such an upgrade would be unnecessary and could cost billions of dollars. The advanced braking systems are required to be in place by 2021.

Democrats in Congress have argued that the new rules are insufficient to mitigate the danger. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) both issued statements arguing that the rules were insufficient and the timelines for safety improvements were too long.

The current industry standard car, the CPC-1232, came into usage in October 2011. These cars have half inch thick shells (marginally thicker than the DOT-111 7/16 inch shells) and advanced valves that are more resilient in the event of an accident. However, these newer cars were involved in the derailments and explosions in Virginia and West Virginia within the past year, raising questions about the validity of replacing only the DOT-111s manufactured before 2011.

Before the rule was finalized, early reports indicated that the rule submitted to the White House by the Department of Transportation has proposed a two-stage phase-out of the current fleet of railcars, focusing first on the pre-2011 cars, then the current standard CPC-1232 cars. In the final rule, DOT mandated a more aggressive timeline for retrofitting the CPC-1232 cars, imposing a deadline of April 1, 2020 for non-jacketed cars.

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DataSpotlight

The recent oil production boom in the United States, while astounding, has created a misleading narrative that the United States is no longer dependent on oil imports. Reports of surging domestic production, calls for relaxation of the crude oil export ban, labels of “Saudi America,” and the recent collapse in oil prices have created a perception that the United States has more oil than it knows what to do with.

This view is misguided. While some forecasts project that the United States could become a self-sufficient oil producer within the next decade, this remains a distant prospect. According to the April 2015 Short Term Energy Outlook, total U.S. crude oil production averaged an estimated 9.3 million barrels per day in March, while total oil demand in the country is over 19 million barrels per day.

This graphic helps illustrate the regional variations in crude oil supply and demand. North America, Europe, and Asia all run significant production deficits, with the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Former Soviet Union are global engines of crude oil supply.